How the West Was Won
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Movie Reviews of How the West Was Won
Movie Review: It needs to be seen on the giant screen
Summary: 3 Stars
How the West Was Won seems to become more of an endurance task every year. While it throws in everything - injun attacks, shooting the rapids, stampedes, train wrecks, the Civil War, wagon trains - except a good old fashioned gunfight, the characterization and linking narrative wrapped around Richard Talmadge's impressive action scenes are a long way from the best of the West. Whether it's Karl Malden, Carol Baker, Robert Preston or Gregory Peck hamming it up or Debbie Reynolds raising yet another ruckus in another painfully gratuitous musical number, the squirm factor is high. Although John Ford's Civil War section (aided by plentiful stock footage from Raintree County) is the best remembered, the film doesn't really pick up until Reynolds is sidelined out of the picture and George Marshall takes over the directorial reins for the impressive railroad section, where it really starts to confront a few of the darker aspects of the price of progress and allows George Peppard, Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda to shine. Unfortunately by then fatigue is beginning to set in, and for all the beauty of the color the transfer from three-panel Cinerama to letterboxed DVD on the original release left the film with some very jarring distortion problems that leaves much of the film looking like it's being played in a semi-circle. And the film's exultant ending that sees the magnificent scenery buried under miles of highways and skyscrapers now seems more tragedy than triumph. At the end of the day it's pure popcorn fodder, but it has its moments and Alfred Newman's score at least has the dynamism that the majority of the film lacks.
As others have mentioned, the quality of the disc left quite a bit to be desired but WHV's 2008 three-disc DVD is something of a mixed blessing. Thanks to some very impressive digital restoration work the infamous lines between the three screens are almost completely invisible in all but a few shots, though there's still some distortion that comes from presenting a film intended for a curved screen in a horizontal format (not a problem for the Blu-Ray edition, which includes a `smileboxed' version not available to regular DVD buyers). While the film for the most part looks great, the extras are definitely lacking. Pride of place goes to 93-minute documentary Cinerama Adventure which covers the history of the format in depth and the making of How the West Was Won in passing - not stinting on the problems the format gave actors - but for some reason the other Cinerama `story' film, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, is all but completely ignored. While the new audio commentary on the main feature is welcome, the featurette about the making of HTWWW from the previous issue featuring copious amounts of home movie footage from the set has been dropped and only the general release trailer has been included (even though the roadshow trailer heralding Cinerama as the greatest step forward in the evolution of film is still missing, despite clips being used in Cinerama Adventure. If you go for the `Ultimate Collectors Edition you'll also get a sized-down reproduction of the souvenir brochure, US pressbook and 20 reproduction stills.
Movie Review: It Has Its Moments
Summary: 3 Stars
It is very difficult to review this film, because it is really five mini-films by three different directors.
Specifically, Henry Hathaway directed three of the story segments - "The Rivers", The Plains" and "The Outlaws", John Ford directed "The Civil War" and George Marshall directed "The Railroad".
They are three fine directors to be sure and each is well-known for their films in the western genre, but because each has a somewhat different style, the movie seems too disjointed.
The common thread that ties all of these stories together is the Prescott family who venture west at the beginning of the story and meet with triumph and tragedy all along the way. The film tells the major stories of the settling of the west through the eyes of three generations of the Prescott family.
While I have given the film a 3 star rating overall, that really does not tell the whole story since I would rate some segments significantly higher than others.
My favorite segments are "The Rivers" and "The Railroad", followed closely by "The Plains". I found those segments to be well-done and believable.
I was not, however, particularly impressed with the "The Civil War" or "The Outlaws" - to me they seemed much less credible and somewhat corny.
Overall, I would recommend the film because it does a reasonable job of telling the tale of the settling of the American west in the time alloted, but do not expect perfection or continuity in this film.
Movie Review: Cinerama or Cinemascope?
Summary: 3 Stars
Since no one is mentioning it, I'm assuming that this is the mid 80's transfer for VHS of a cinemascope print of the cinerama film. The cinemascope print used about the middle 80% of the cinerama picture frame. One review mentioned a restoration. Hopefully that will include the full width of the cinerama frame and appear on BLU-RAY so I can justify a BLU-RAY player.Movie Review: Segmented screen
Summary: 2 Stars
This is a great movie, it is a shame that the edition amazon is selling appears to have been sewn together. When seen on a regular tv set, there are three movie segments, badly patched into a panoramic view. This is poor technology in our age, and it detracts enormously from the film's enjoyability. It looks like they used a "photo stitch" program to make the copy, and the results are poor indeed. Not recommended.Movie Review: How The West Was Won
Summary: 2 Stars
Along with the failures in the picture quality, I am surprised no reviews mention the time length of only 155 minutes. The original was 162 mins. I suspect they shortened or completely left out the great soundtrack music in the Opening, Intermission, and closing orchestrations. Since I read the other reviews, I did not buy this version. Can someone help me as to where the missing minutes are?